Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Idol of the Corruptor currently drops from General Vezax in Ulduar and will be obtainable for 19 emblems of conquest as soon as 3.2 comes out - and everything will drop emblems of conquest, at least. The proc is 153 agility for 12 seconds, and it has close to a 100% uptime since it can be refreshed with another mangle. If there is an internal cooldown it is less than 4.5 seconds.

The Idol of Mutilation costs 25 emblems of triumph, which are only obtainable from the Coliseum raids (10 and 25 man) and daily heroics. The proc rate for lacerate/swipe appears to be quite high and it seems to have close to a 100% uptime as well, and there appears to be no internal cooldown. The proc gives 200 dodge rating.

With the nerfs to agility and dodge rating, here's what each item does before diminishing returns factors in:

These are with the new 3.2 nerfed agility/dodge multipliers, in case you were wondering.

So the Mutilation idol gives more dodge %. That's not a big surprise, though with all the stat multipliers it's less than you might think. Even if the multipliers don't take into account, it's about 3.2% dodge.

However, that's not all that agility gives you. In this specific case, you're also gaining 362 armor and 2.2% crit. Is .6% dodge worth 362 armor and extra crit?

According to Rawr, nope. Even removing all threat value, the Idol of the Corruptor wins over the Idol of Terror by about 16%. If you factor in threat it improves even more. This is fairly intuitive, especially given what we know about fights in Ulduar.

Now, there's a wrinkle to this. Early in 3.2, it was possible to swap idols and have both procs up simultaneously. Later on in the PTR they added this confusing bit of verbiage:

Items with Triggered Effects: These items generally have cooldowns on how often they can be triggered. Those cooldowns are now triggered each time the item is equipped (example: A trinket has a 45-second cooldown on an effect triggered by player attacks; when a player equips that item, the effect will be unable to be triggered for the first 45 seconds it is worn).

The problem with this is that as far as I can tell, neither idol has an internal cooldown of any sort. Have they added one since? If they haven't and if this doesn't apply to things in a generic way (ie, giving everything a 5-second delay on equip regardless of ICD), this trick will still work. If you macro all your attacks to something like this:

/equip Idol of the Corruptor/cast mangle

/equip Idol of Mutilation/cast lacerate

You should be able to get both procs up all the time. Note that this is not tested on live, so don't take it as gospel; while I suspect that it does work, I can see it going the other way. If so, one of the better things you can do when threat isn't an issue is to use those macros - you'll gain 2-3% more dodge just from doing that.

If anyone else on the PTR has the emblems to test this out, I'd appreciate it; mine were wiped along with all the emblem gear I had bought.

Does changing idol while in combat not triger a GCD? I know i tried that sort of idea with my shaman when i had a bunch of different totems. I /equip macroed the chain heal totem to chain heal and healing wave totem to healing wave. The totem /equip blocked the subsequent spell as it triggered a GCD but only when i was in combat. While standing in Dalaran everything looked like it was going to work like a charm. Was pretty dissappointed as i thought i'd just had a brain wave to save mana on chain heal and increase spellpower on big heals but to no avail. I'll try it on live with my druid and see what happens.

I am usually a huge proponent of agility. In fact I only gem agi if I have to use a red slot. That being said, the numbers for picking the old idol do not hold up.

Here goes

if you do the math for an extended fight (like 1000 attacks of 50000 or something), then it appears that 0.6% dodge wins over the 360armor.

0.6% dodge: for 1000 attacks of 50000 (actual damage if landed = 14.5k with 34k armor, after POTP and ignoring things like inspiration etc.), 6 more dodged which is 14.5 * 6 = 87120 mitigated (I am going to ignore DimR for the purpose of this calculation)

360 armor: say I dodge or don't get hit by 55% of attacks (approximating based on dodge, def, NE racial, etc.), and 450 still land. with 34k armor that's 14.5*450 = 6534000. with 34.36k armor, that's 450 hits of 14.37 (about), or 6467076. The difference is 66924, or about 20k less than with dodge. Ok add in 2.2% increased uptime on SD. That's 22 procs (I'm approximating, again, probably a bit less) of about 1500 each, or a total of 33000. So for that scenario, yes, it looks like corruptor is better, by a little bit (10k is pretty minor given total damage)

Now for a boss hitting for 100k (heroic TOTC maybe):

0.6% dodge: 1000 attacks of 28.9k. 6* 28.9 = 173karmor: 450 * 28.9 = 13008600. 450 * 28.7 = 12915000that's only a 93.6k mitigation, and even with the added SD procs (which are less and less valuable with harder hitting bosses), it is far inferior.

Now, I understand that it may sometimes be more important to have less spiky damage (that's what druids are good for, after all), but in terms of total damage taken the winner is pretty obvious. I am not even considering the possible difference in uptime (which appears to favor mutilation more). And the more damage dealt by melee, the more the 0.6% dodge is favored... Of course if you are over dodge cap this will change.

Given these numbers (and correct me if my math is wrong, please), explain to me again, why are we picking IotC???

RedQueen - that's an interesting analysis. And you're right - over infinite time, the idol of mutilation will result in less overall damage taken.

Just as much as over time, 20 agility will result in less overall damage taken than 30 stamina will.

But...that's not the only thing we care about.

First let's go onto this statement:0.6% dodge: for 1000 attacks of 50000 (actual damage if landed = 14.5k with 34k armor, after POTP and ignoring things like inspiration etc.), 6 more dodged which is 14.5 * 6 = 87120 mitigated (I am going to ignore DimR for the purpose of this calculation)

I would challenge you to find any reasonable boss fight where you take 1000 melee attacks over the course of the fight. The closest I can think is something like Algalon (which actually does favor avoidance). But most of the time, fights are 4-5 minutes long, attack timers are 2 seconds, and you're going to be attacked with dodgable attacks perhaps 150 times at best.

Which means that 8 dodges turns into...1. And that's maybe.

The 'maybe' part is the second part. Dodging 1 attack can be good, but you can't depend on it. You might not get anything special here. 360 armor will always work though. And always working is important, especially when you consider that it works always against non-avoidable attacks such as when Anub'arak stuns you, or when Gormok impales.

Finally, it increases your crit rate - which not only improves SD, but simply improves your threat. That makes it extra valuable.

Like I said - if for some reason you must maximize avoidance over everything else - such as a fight where you must maximize total damage taken (something like Vezax or Algalon), the mutilation idol is slightly better. Most of the time that's not the case.

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About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.